Windows 7 passes with flying colors

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Chief Editor Ted Como brings you the latest tech advice on Tech Bytes

Published Tuesday, November 3 2009 - (3) Comments

Hands down, Windows7 is the best operating system Microsoft has produced.
I had planned last weekend to move from Vista Home Premium to Win7 Professional by setting up a dual boot on separate drives but after thinking about it some more, decided against it. Doing so would put the boot loader for both operating systems on the primary drive and if that drive failed, I would not be able to boot into either operarting system. It also would have required resinstalling all of my programs in W7.
Instead, I did an in-place upgrade from Vista Home Premium to W7 Home Premium. Since I was upgrading version-to-version, no re-installation was necessary. Although it took a while, W7 launched with all of my programs and data intact. It was the smoothest upgrade I've been through with any Microsoft operating system.
W7 Setup uninstalled all of my programs, installed the W7 files and loaded them, and then reinstalled all of my programs; and all of them work as they did in Vista. The process took just under three hours.
W7 fixed a graphical problem I didn't know I had. I ordered dual video cards on the system I upgraded which were not properly configured to share the graphics processing load. I had noticed that one of the cards was running hot and the last thing W7 did was to correct the configuration. The only immediate adjustment I had to make was to find other computers on my network - two running XP and one, Vista. W7 did not pick up the name of my network; if you install W7 and can't see the other computers in your network - and they can't see the W7 machine - the following may solve the problem.
From the Start menu, right click Computer, Properties, Advanced, and under computer name, click Change Settings. Assign the network the same network name your other computers are using and click OK. You'll have to reboot the W7 system for the changes to take affect, and the other computers to find the W7 machine. You'll see a Public share folder on the W7 machine where you can put documents, video, photos, etc., that other systems can access.
The only other issue involved an inability to access the Internet, though the system could see my router. This was quickly resolved through some research on my Vista laptop which found a third-party program called Bonjour DNS Responder Service installed with Office 2007 was causing the problem. To fix it, I typed "services.msc" in the Start/Run box and found the service which starts with "Id(underline)String2.6844..." etc. I right clicked to select properties on this service, selected Disabled, clicked Stop, and then Apply and rebooted. The problem disappeared.
As to new features in W7, I use Wordpad often and in W7 it's finally redesigned. It now opens Word docx files and includes the ability to read and write documents to the Open Office XML format. You can insert objects or drawings, and date and time, and there are more choices for saving and printing, as well as search and replace. You may save a drawing as a .png. .jpeg, .bmp or .gif file, and new formatting options have been added including highlighting, bullets, line breaks and new colors.
The W7 desktop is a godsend if you commonly work with many windows open; you'll find yourself using three new features: Aero Shake, Aero Peek and Snap. If you want to focus on just one widow, grab it with your mouse and "shake it" and all other windows will disappear; shake again, and they're back. If you want to see only the desktop through all those open windows - perhaps to view a desktop gadget - just move your cursor to the bottom right of the task bar. If you're working with text in two different windows, for example, snap one to the left and the other to the right and they will resize to half-screen each.
Right click the desktop to personalize it with various themes including slideshows. Gadgets are small windows displaying such as the local weather, a clock, photos, etc., and they may now be placed anywhere on the desktop rather than just at right as under Vista. And searches are offered everywhere: in the start menu just type a few letters of a program's name to find it, or text you remember in a previous e-mail or saved document. You can use Windows Explorer's built in search box along the same lines, refining it to narrow the search for photos including when pictures were taken, or by file type, size, extension, etc.
W7 taskbar buttons can be used to open programs, switch between them, or preview open windows with large thumbnail images, including multiple windows open in Internet Explorer. You can drop and drag to move taskbar buttons around, or pin any program to the taskbar where it may be opened - Wordpad for instance - instead of placing an icon on the desktop. Jumplists are another new taskbar feature: these are shortcut menus that open as you scroll over items in the taskbar. The jumplist for Windows Media Player, for instance, allows you to run it right from the taskbar.
Among other new features: libraries may be used to aggregate content in multiple folders into single, easy to manage views; the User Account Control is now a slider to change settings; security and firewall have been enhanced; you can set up Homegroups to share music, pictures and documents over your home network provided those machine also run W7; Credential Manager saves your user names and passwords from enabled web sites; the Problem Steps Recorder may be launched if you are having a problem with a program and it will record what happens when the problem occurs; and Media Player gets a new look and new functionality.
You can easily change system sounds, your account picture, the window border glass color, move the taskbar, add a toolbar to the taskbar, customize the start menu, change the power button action, tone down notifications, change your mouse cursor, chance you screensaver, change autoplay options, and even let the PC recognize your voice. Some W7 useful keyboard shortcuts: +Home, minimizes all but the current window; +Spacebar, makes all windows transparent; +Up or Down Arrow, maximizes or minimizes the current window; +Left Arrow or Right Arrow, tiles the window on the left or right side of the screen; and +T cycles through items on the Taskbar.
Learn Piano: zebrakeys.com offers more than 50 free piano lessons for various levels of difficult at no charge, including the ability to interact with each lesson and actually perform the lesson on a virtual keyboard. Of most use are basic instruction that will teach you to read music, understand music notation and keyboard layout, but you'll also find intermediate and advanced tutorials for those with more experience.
Off Beat: An Associated Press story in the Times-News failed in its attempt to debunk global cooling. Fact is, global temperatures have not been rising the past several years, but dropping. AP gathered temperatures for 100 years or so (the accuracy of this data is quite unreliable) and handed them to statisticians it hired to determine whether there was a global cooling "trend" of late. Of course, the result was quite predictable: a few years of global cooling temperatures, within the context of many more years of global warming temperatures, could not indicate a cooling trend.
But this approach, in and of itself, demonstrates that a hundred year or so of temperatures within the context of five billion or so years of Earth history, cannot be used to demonostrate anything.

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In my humble opinion, anyone who would buy another windows operating system after experiencing Vista, is brainwashed. Put windows out of their misery. Buy a Mac.

Virgil Caine | 11/14/2009 - 6:41 PM - ( Comment

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I'm too old to shake it. So much for doing less with the mouse...but cool idea. re: "any windows open; you'll find yourself using three new features: Aero Shake, Aero Peek and Snap. If you want to focus on just one widow, grab it with your mouse and "shake it" and all other windows will disappear; shake again, and they're back. "

fivekitten fivekitten | 11/7/2009 - 9:15 AM - ( Comment

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"This was quickly resolved through some research on my Vista laptop which found a third-party program called Bonjour DNS Responder Service installed with Office 2007 was causing the problem. To fix it, I typed "services.msc" in the Start/Run box and found the service which starts with "Id(underline)String2.6844..." etc. I right clicked to select properties on this service, selected Disabled, clicked Stop, and then Apply and rebooted. The problem disappeared." I believe the bonjour services are ipod related. I disabled mine awhile ago, but my daughter had problems with itunes until I enabled a few of the services I had previously disabled. If you do disable bonjour and later have problems with you itunes, try enabling bonjour again. I really should double check this before I comment...but I have too many tabs open and not done with my first cup of coffee...just want to advise ipod/itune users to see if there's any changes after you disable bonjour.

fivekitten fivekitten | 11/7/2009 - 9:12 AM - ( Comment

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